Type 2 diabetes, also referred to as non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), is the major cause of diabetes in developed countries. In the United States alone, approximately 17 million people, and more than 120 million worldwide, are affected. Because this disorder is a late onset disease and occurs often in overweight persons, it can be expected that the number of patients suffering from this disease will increase further. Patients suffering from type 2 diabetes usually still produce insulin, but become increasingly resistant to their own insulin and insulin therapy. A promising new class of drugs has been recently introduced that resensitizes patients to their own insulin (insulin sensitizers), thereby reducing blood glucose and triglyceride levels, and thus abolishing, or at least reducing, the requirement for exogenous insulin. Rosiglitazone (Avandia™) and Pioglitazone (Actos™) bind to the nuclear receptor PPARγ and are the first representatives of this class of receptor ligands approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in the United States and several other countries. These compounds, however, have side effects including rare but severe liver toxicities (i.e., troglitazone) and they can increase body weight and cause edema in humans and may also lead to a worsening situation for. patients with certain heart conditions. Such side effects are of major concern for patients who might require treatment for a decade or longer. Therefore, new and better drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and related disorders are needed. Ligands for the retinoid X receptor (RXR) have been suggested and examined as alternative choices for the development of a new class of insulin sensitizer drugs, that could avoid side effects seen with the PPARγ insulin sensitizers. RXR ligands can also influence cholesterol metabolism and transport and could therefore address additional aspects such as hypercholesteremia and arteriosclerosis, often seen with type 2 diabetic patients. In fact, a majority of type 2 diabetic patients appear to die of an arteriogenic event. However, typical RXR ligands lead to increases in triglyceride levels in animals and humans, which makes them undesirable for the treatment of most type 2 diabetic patients that very often have already elevated blood triglyceride levels. A subgroup of heterocyclic derivatives that does not lead to such undesirable side effects and which interacts with RXR in a highly specific manner is disclosed. Such RXR ligands with these unexpected properties are useful for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, hypercholesteremia, arteriosclerosis and disorders related to these diseases. Disclosed are molecules that interact with a side pocket of their specific receptor ligand-binding domain, where the receptor is a retinoid X receptor. Such molecules are useful for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, hypercholesteremia and related diseases, including arteriosclerosis.